- Duration: 30 min
- Platform: meet
- Source: Read.ai 01JFAWBANJ0EK340AMR9JZHCT7 (https://app.read.ai/analytics/meetings/01JFAWBANJ0EK340AMR9JZHCT7)
Transcript
[Michael Houck]: One is for like users that you can use on sales calls and stuff. And then the second one is if you’re ever like showing off the creator functionality. I don’t know why you necessarily would be, but he set up a creator one for you too. Was this recently in Slack? UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Yeah. [Max Palmer]: It was like last night. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Oh, what? Okay. [Max Palmer]: I got to find out what channel this is. And I, some of these channels, I have kind of muted because there’s just like nonstop. I don’t know what channels you’re in. [Michael Houck]: But what I would recommend doing not a lot of people do this. I don’t even know if people really know you can do this. Let me show you. So what I do is you see my screen? No. Oh, for some reason. Yeah. Let me share my whole screen. Okay, let me share Slack, I guess. I can’t do that either. Okay, so I’ll just send you a screenshot. Basically what I do is I have all these different channel groups. Um, I send it to you in Slack. So at the top I have like our team channels and then I have our megaphone studios, clients are all of our vendors, um, our email growth clients. And then like any external people that I have DMS with, yeah, they’re all just in those folders. So it actually does. And then I have like a megaphone alerts section, which is just entirely muted. It’s for the engineers. So yeah, it’s helpful to group them that way. And then you can mute the ones that obviously you want. But let me find where that is for you. [Max Palmer]: In the megaphone channel, I don’t see it from last night at least. [Michael Houck]: Well, it’s on a thread that I applied to them before and you were on. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Okay. Oh, you know what it is? [Michael Houck]: He posted it in our engineering channel, which I don’t think you’re in. Yeah. That’s okay. I’ll have him send it to you. Cool. [Michael Houck]: Okay. Um, he’ll send that to you today, but yeah, you can use that on calls. You can play around with it, get familiar with the product and everything. [Max Palmer]: Yeah. I still want to do my Google thread. [Michael Houck]: Um, well these, these will only work on the dev environment, but I know he should also, you can DM him and have you have him also set you up with like a prod account too, obviously. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Yeah. [Max Palmer]: Well you said, to pay for one and then refund myself. [Michael Houck]: Oh yeah. You can do that too. That’s fine. [Max Palmer]: It’s probably the easiest way to do it actually. Um, and then I’ll set a budget and I’ll pay for creators. Um, but yeah, I think it could do well. [Michael Houck]: You have a, you have a vision. [Max Palmer]: You have a vision. Yeah. I’ve got like 20 tweets from big people. So we’ll see. [Michael Houck]: Um, if you want any, if you want to brainstorm the hook tosses off the I was going to, yeah. [Max Palmer]: I’ll send you some when I do it. Yeah, he just picked me. Okay, so. I think let’s talk about newsletter growth and let’s talk about sponsors. [Michael Houck]: So whichever one you wanna do first, we can do. [Max Palmer]: Okay, so sponsors, you know, Freck, I emailed them back. I think you were in that email and said, you know, we can do 7,500. And if you can close before the new year, so we’re waiting on a response there. Bamboo, I followed up with kind of a strong push for urgency yesterday. And it’s like my third push for urgency in the last two weeks or whatever. [Michael Houck]: I can’t believe they committed in October and it’s not gonna close in Q4. That is so crazy. I know, it’s pissing me off. [Max Palmer]: I don’t blame you at all. [Michael Houck]: So yeah. [Max Palmer]: So I just, you know, the, the way sales works is time kills deals. And the longer time goes by without the deal closing, the less likelihood that deal closes. So both Freck and Bamboo, I’m just starting to lose confidence in, and I’m preparing myself for the worst. So that’s what I’m going to say. I’ve lost confidence in Freck. [Michael Houck]: I think that they, for some reason wanted to be in the community. And they’re like weirded out that we didn’t put them in there, even though it didn’t make sense for them to go in there. So I think that they took that in like a weird way. That’s my read on it. But for Bamboo, I’m oddly still optimistic. The only thing that I think could kill it is if they like change course in Q1, like strategically. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Yeah. [Max Palmer]: I mean, he had just said, I think it was last week, that like, we’re still good to go. And yeah. He was out of office for a week and a half or so. We’ll see. And then tomorrow we have the meeting with Matt from building Midwestern. So you definitely need to be on that call because he wants to chat through like the direction of the piece and what we’re going to. Yeah. [Michael Houck]: Which is, which is fair. So we can, we can do that. Is there anything I should know about your interactions with them so far that’ll help me just like not fuck up the deal getting on that call? Office? [Max Palmer]: Not really. He’s a straightforward guy. Like, you know, he, yeah, was just kind of no bullshit. He’s like, you know, he’s like, I don’t want this to be where you guys just collect your invoice, do a couple newsletter spots for us. And then we never hear from you again. He’s like, I want to make this work for the both of us. So that ideally, we’re like Athena to where we do a bunch of placements with you guys. And we’re like, yeah, And I was like, yeah, that’s what we want, too, of course. So we really need to put effort into it, and at the very least, make it seem like we’re putting effort and thought into this. Yeah. [Michael Houck]: I mean, the tough part is we’re not really going to know what the right exact things in the piece are until I interview this guy, right? But we can obviously come in with the vision that we have for it and hope that that line with what he wants to. [Max Palmer]: Yeah. And it seems like he’s built a really good business. Like, um, it seems like they’re, they’re crushing it. And they in fricking Joplin, Missouri. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, dude, these, these like, regardless of, I guess, whether it’s international or us based, these like outsource staffing, subscription based agency businesses, like we should have done one of those like two years ago. [Max Palmer]: They’re a pain to run. [Michael Houck]: I’m sure. And churn is probably like annoying to deal with. Um, yeah, it got, it became a way bigger trend than I thought it was going to. [Max Palmer]: It really did. Yeah. Um, so yeah. And then I’m trying to think what, uh, like other deals I’ve, I’ve been trying to sell this guy Ori from substrata for months now. And he finally like seems like he’s ready to go for QM cause I told him we can do the graphic on the newsletter placement. Um, They love the images. They love the images. Yeah, I know. And so I’m pushing that, and then there might be one or two others that I’ve kind of sent discounted options to. [Michael Houck]: Well, let’s hope Substrata and Midwestern both close by end of month. If Bamboo and Freck don’t close this month, if we get Bamboo in January, that’ll still feel good. Obviously not as good as getting the Midwestern. End of year, but yeah. Okay. If we, if we get both, if we get Midwestern, I’ll feel good about it for this month. Cause they’re, they’re pretty big. [Max Palmer]: Yeah. I wouldn’t expect some strata to do this month though. They’ve been moving so slow, but yeah, I think we can get Midwestern in and then, you know, he said what he said, eight K is what he wants to spend. Yeah. [Michael Houck]: I mean, that’s a good start. I think when Athena started, they booked like a three-pack at 9K or something, or at 75K or something like that, so. [Max Palmer]: Yeah, and then I just messaged in the Slack with MadRev, so I don’t know if you saw the email with Mary from Vanna. Yeah, I did. So now she’s like down to one placement, and so. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, I actually think should push that one out as late as possible, because what she’s clearly saying is that she wants to see results, which is fair. They’ve spent money with us. They haven’t seen as many results as they wanted. So it’s actually in our favor to grow the newsletter by as much as possible before letting them do another placement. So we’re adding, again, like 200-ish per day now probably going to accelerate that to like 300 or 400 a day in January. So yeah, it’s actually in our benefit to sort of do that later. So I know she said January 7th. What are your thoughts on saying, oh, you know, that was booked up or did we offer that to her and we’re holding it for her? [Max Palmer]: Like, what’s the status there? I mean, that placement’s available. If you want to go that route, we can. I’m just thinking long term. [Michael Houck]: Like we want her to book this, get a couple of results, and then book like a three pack or a six pack or something like that. [Max Palmer]: For sure. Yeah. So yeah, you’re saying let’s just take the ones, not try to push her for a two or three pack right now. [Michael Houck]: No, no, no, no. What I’m proposing is that, what I’m asking first is that, is there a route that’s not weird to say, oh, January 7th is actually booked? But you can do like January 31st or something like that. [Max Palmer]: Yeah, I can respond to it. [Michael Houck]: Unless you said earlier in the thread that January 7th is like definitely available. [Max Palmer]: I said on December 11th, the 7th, 18th and 25th are available for, you know, because I was trying to get her on a three pack. Right, right, right. And that was December. So a week ago. And then she just followed up this morning. Let’s just January 7th. So I could say now, sorry, January 7th was taken. We can do the 25th. Yeah, let me see. Yeah, we can do the 25th with her. Yeah, let’s do that. [Michael Houck]: Because that gives us an extra, like, couple thousand at least subscribers to get them in front of And I think again, the more subscribers means the higher that that turns into a package afterwards. Yeah. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Okay. [Max Palmer]: Um, okay. So I’ll just respond with that and we’ll take the one placement. How much do we want to sell it for? [Michael Houck]: Cause matter of it’s going to take 30%. [Max Palmer]: What did, what do we do with them before with, with Vanta before it was a 25 per we’ve always done the, let’s just do 2,500. [Michael Houck]: Yeah. Let’s do try 500. Let’s say get 70% of that. We’ll give you guys a discount because you know, we want you guys to see results and whatever, all that, all that stuff. [Max Palmer]: Yeah. Happy to still give you a discount, a $500 discount for just one placement. [Michael Houck]: Yep. Sounds good. [Max Palmer]: Sounds good. Okay. Um, and then yeah, I’ll say the seventh is taken. We can do the 25th. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Yeah. Okay, cool. [Max Palmer]: Yeah, and then, yeah, I think that’s it regarding sponsorships. [Michael Houck]: Okay, so let’s say that Midwestern closes and no one else closes this month, that puts us at 14, 15K, so pretty decent month. Yeah, that’s okay. Yeah, not what we were hoping for, Bamboo and Freck, but it’s okay. All right, well, I’m self-missing about Bamboo, Freck less so. Okay, you wanna talk newsletter stuff? Yeah, so you mean for my newsletter? Yeah. [Max Palmer]: Yeah, so I basically, you know, I wanna learn how to do it just like the backend, just so I know, you know, what Raina is doing on the backend. Yep. [Michael Houck]: So I’m not in your newsletter, but we did the same thing for AI tool report. So I can just walk you through it by sharing screen, um, and walking you through what we did for them. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Okay. [Max Palmer]: You want to share your screen or, or do we want to just do it on mine? I can share mine. [Michael Houck]: Well, as far as actually setting it up, I think Rena is either already set it up or is in progress of setting it up or something. So, okay. [Max Palmer]: I don’t know if it matters too much. [Michael Houck]: Um, you can also add me to your newsletter. Letter and I can just share screen that way just so I can move around. Because you got to go back between like the segments and automations a lot. So it’s probably just easier if I drive. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Yeah. OK. [Max Palmer]: Let me add you. OK. Use Michael at Hauk.FYI, not Hauk and Hauk.News. OK. I can’t invite you. Oh, because you’re at three people already? [Michael Houck]: because we’re a three people. That’s why I gave, that’s why I gave Rina the slot. Cause I figured you and your brother would be, would be two. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Yeah. [Max Palmer]: Okay. So you want to just show me on AI tour part? [Michael Houck]: Yeah, I’ll show you, I’ll show you there. Um, and then the same exact thing is set up on yours. So it’ll be fine. Um, okay. So first things first, when she goes in to do an import, um, what she’s doing is she’s adding a CSV. And there’s a custom field that she’s adding here. I’ll just like add myself as a one off here so. She’s adding a custom field in the CSV called newbie. And it’s set to be true to. It’s like a binary true false. It’s set to be true and then what she’s also doing is applying a tag. Called. Newbie to each subscriber. Once she imports those people, then what happens is that they get automatically added to a segment called newbie pending. Basically, this is anyone who is an active subscriber, who has the custom field newbie is true, who has opened fewer than two emails, who has the tag, was imported, and has been in the last 28 days. So within the last 28 days. So these are considered the newbies. These are the people who are pending for the newsletter. We’re not sure whether they’re going to make it into the newsletter or whether they’re going to churn out. [Max Palmer]: And this is for non-evergreen newsletters? UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Yes. [Michael Houck]: The process is pretty similar with evergreen newsletters in terms like the fact that we have these segments and these automations, but the actual structure of them is a little, a little different. [Max Palmer]: Okay. Cause I’m basically just throwing mine directly into the list. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, correct. So they’ll go into this pending segment and they’ll be receiving your normal, your normal newsletter. But what’s important is that, uh, I think you said you don’t have a welcome sequence, right? [Max Palmer]: I have a welcome email, one welcome email. That’s it. Is it an automation or is it an automated thing? [Michael Houck]: Like when you import somebody? [Max Palmer]: it’s an automated thing when somebody subscribes. And then when I import people, Beehive gives me the option to send that person a welcome email. Right. [Michael Houck]: It’s like, um, it’s like this. Yes. [Max Palmer]: And I use, I don’t send them the welcome email. Okay. Oh, right. Okay. [Michael Houck]: So when they’re imported, they don’t receive it. It’s when they sign up regularly. That they receive. Yes. Okay. That should be, that should be fine then. Um, so, okay. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: 300,000. Yeah, I know. [Michael Houck]: I know. It’s nuts. Um, okay. So they, they’ve been pending and this means that they’re receiving the normal newsletter. Um, then there’s this next segment called newbie activate. Basically if they are active, they are a newbie. They have the newbie tag, they were imported, and it’s still within the last 28 days they’ve joined. But either they’ve opened two different emails or they’ve clicked on at least one email during that 28 days. Whenever that happens, then they get added to this activate segment and they’re no longer in the pending segment. Why that’s important is because we set up an automation called newbie activate. And basically, whenever somebody enters the segment, newbie activate, which, there we go. Whenever somebody enters the newbie activate segment, they get added to this automation. And all this automation does is make them, the newbie field to be false, and that’s it. It just turns newbie to be false. No longer a newbie. They basically graduated from the newbie process at this point. They won’t be in the activate segment and they won’t be in the pending segment. They’ll just be in the main newsletter. Okay. [Max Palmer]: We track. Go ahead. No. Um, and over time, will I be able to see the open rates of these within a second? Yes. [Michael Houck]: So once they graduate, once they meet the engagement criteria, within the first 28 days. Then they get added to this segment, newbie graduated. These are the folks who obviously are going to be receiving the newsletter and who you’re being credited for, right? These are the subscribers that I’m paying for. We’re handing them off to you. If they churn after that, they’ve graduated our process, basically. So they have the tag, so aka we imported them. They don’t have this other tag, newbie failed. I’ll get to that in a second, but newbie is false, right? So they’re no longer newbies, but they were newbies at one point and they haven’t failed. The reason the failed tag exists is because if they don’t ever make it into the activate segment, so they’re in the pending, they’re trying to meet the engagement criteria, but they never do meet the engagement criteria. Then they get added to this segment called newbie to churn, basically, These are people who, again, they’re still newbies, they were imported by us, it’s been more than 28 days, and they haven’t met the engagement criteria. When those happen, we do the same thing as activate. So there’s this newbie failed automation, same structure, when they enter the newbie to churn segment, Then what we do is we unsubscribe them from the newsletter, we make them not newbies anymore, and we add the newbie failed tag. So they won’t show up in the graduated segment, even though it’s been more than 28 days. Instead, they’ll show up in this newbie failed segment where, again, they’re no longer newbies, but they were at one point, but they are also failed. [Max Palmer]: And they’re unsubscribed from the newsletter. [Michael Houck]: And they’re unsubscribed from the newsletter. So basically eventually everyone will either show up in graduated or failed after running through this first process. So basically everyone in pending and then either activate or churn and then either graduated or failed respectively. [Max Palmer]: Okay, so five total segments. [Michael Houck]: Five segments and you have two automations. You have activate and failed. If you also set up a What we’ll do is as One of the triggers for the welcome sequence will say if they enter the graduated segment Then they get your normal welcome sequence Okay, I don’t think we’ll ever plan on doing a welcome sequence just because we’re never gonna really have evergreen content Yeah, I mean I I can see it if you wanted to like sell a product or yeah, but otherwise I agree, there’s no urgent need to. But yeah, that’s it. It’s a little convoluted, but until we are sending people through API and have control over it that way, this is the best way to do it. Okay. [Max Palmer]: And I won’t really need to touch anything? It’s totally automated. You can see the metrics on the individual segments. [Michael Houck]: Obviously, the only two that really matter are, or the only one that really matters is the graduated segment in terms But yeah, you can track everything there. There’s nothing you need to do. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Okay. [Max Palmer]: Yep. I see. I see she created them a few hours ago. [Michael Houck]: She might still be making edits because yeah, 11 minutes ago. Yeah, because she set some things up based on the kind of temporary way that I wanted her to do it. And so I had her, I finalized it this morning and now she’s making the updates. [Max Palmer]: Okay, so one final time, they start in pending, if they open or, oh yeah, one other question was, what if they click on the unsubscribe button and that counts as their one click? Does it keep them in the [Michael Houck]: I think it looks at if their status is active too, but that’s a good question. We should probably, there’s a way to make it so that you can exclude certain URLs from click tracking. So let me make a note that we should do that. Unsubscribe URL from click tracking in automations. Yeah, that way they don’t get picked up for that. And they don’t get resubscribed, that would be bad. [Max Palmer]: that loom you sent earlier to Rena and I, that was basically just explaining this whole process, right? Yeah. I was just showing her how to do it. Yeah. Okay. Cause I’m going to send, I might send that to my brother just so he can see how it’s being done. Sure. That’s fine. Okay. Cool. Um, okay, great. And then when she’s just going to add, so for, for us, she would add four or 200 emails a week every Monday, right? UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Yes. [Michael Houck]: For you guys, she would add 200. Well, she might actually end up adding more than 200 to start. We’re going to do 200. We expect that somewhere between 50% and 100% are going to pass this process. We don’t know exactly what that number is yet for people. But there’s going to be people who don’t make it. So just 200 a week won’t get us to 800 a month. Obviously, we’ll make it up in the second month if we don’t hit it the first month, but yeah, she’ll be doing imports every Monday, and then Ben will be sending, we’ll set up a separate channel for this if you want to add your brother to it too. Ben will be sending a weekly reporting of like, hey, here’s how many people we added, here’s how many people are at this stage of the funnel, here’s how performance is going for the graduated segment, all that kind of stuff. [Max Palmer]: Um, great. Is there, will we add people today? Like before? Yes. So once Rena completes everything, she’s going to send this to me for review. [Michael Houck]: I’ll give her the thumbs up and then she’ll make the first, uh, the first import. I don’t know if we have, well, I guess we do have 200 because we don’t need to wait for them to go through the cold email process for you. So normally the first week or two would be lower volume, but I think in your case, that won’t need to be true. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Great. Okay. Cool. [Michael Houck]: Let me know if you have any questions about it or anything else, but it’s good, man. I think we’re going to start selling it to startups ASAP. I’m waiting to hear back from Matt on a couple of things before I give the green light to do that. But yeah, I really think that be a big deal in 2025 for us. So hopefully it is. Cool. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: All right. [Michael Houck]: I’m flying home in the morning tomorrow. [Max Palmer]: But I’ll be working from the West Coast for the next week and a half. And I think I am going to end up booking this last minute trip to South America. [Michael Houck]: Oh, nice. Where are you going to be when? [Max Palmer]: So I would first go to Rio to stay with my buddy. I found a flight for 400 bucks one way on the 31st, but I kind of want to be there for New Year’s. So I might try to go like on the 28th or 29th. And I’d stay there like a week, week and a half, and then probably go to Buenos Aires the week after. [Michael Houck]: So I will be in Buenos from the 16th through the morning of the 20th, I think, or 16th to 19th, 16th 20th. So, okay. I think that that might line up with when you’re there. Actually, I don’t know. [Max Palmer]: It might on like the 16th and 17th. I gotta, I gotta look through all these flight options and see what’s best though. Cause I don’t want to spend a fortune, but I want to get down there. [Michael Houck]: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let me know. I’ll be there. I’m staying in Palermo, Hollywood, not Palermo Soho. Um, there’s like, I don’t, have you been to Buenos before? [Max Palmer]: No, I’ve never been. [Michael Houck]: So neighborhood wise, you want to stay in either Palermo, Hollywood or Palermo, Palermo, Soho. Palermo, Hollywood is more quiet residential. Palermo, Soho is like more shopping touristy, but like also like, you know, very active. Yeah. So yeah, either one. Okay, cool. Thanks. [Max Palmer]: And then Liam’s AI tool report is going to be there at the same time. [Michael Houck]: So we can, we can at least I’m going to have coffee with him and try to build a deeper relationship with them. [Max Palmer]: Yeah, for sure. All right. [Michael Houck]: Well, let me know. I’ll be around. [Max Palmer]: Cool. All right. See ya.